1 Introduction

Oracle TopLink is a powerful and flexible Java persistence framework for storing Java objects in a relational database or for converting Java objects to XML documents. TopLink provides APIs and a run-time environment for implementing the persistence layer of Java EE applications.

1.1 About This Book

This book, Solutions Guide for Oracle TopLink, documents a number of scenarios, or use cases, that illustrate TopLink features and typical TopLink development processes. These are not tutorials that lead you step-by-step through every task required to complete a project. Rather, they document general processes and key details for solving particular problems and then provide links to other documentation for more information.

1.2 What You Need to Know First

To make good use of this documentation, you should already be familiar with the following:

The concepts and programming practices of Java SE and Java EE. In the current release, TopLink supports Java EE 6. However, the current release of WebLogic Server (documented in several use cases) only supports Java EE 5. For more information, see the following:

If you are working with TopLink Java Persistence Architecture, you should be familiar with the concepts and programming practices of JPA 2.0, as specified in the Java Persistence API, Version 2.0 specification at http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=317.

If you are working with TopLink MOXy, you should be familiar with the concepts and programming practices of JAXB 2.0, as specified in the The Java Architecture for XML Binding (JAXB) 2.0 specification at http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=222.

Developers using TopLink DBWS should be familiar with the concepts and programming practices of JAX-WS 2.0, as specified in the Java API for XML-Based Web Services (JAX-WS) 2.0 specification at http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=224.